Turkey should try to mitigate quake losses: Opp. leader

ANKARA

Turkey's main opposition leader demanded Tuesday the country take measures to mitigate losses before any earthquake.

"We have enacted some laws, but they do not hang together. We have enacted law after every earthquake," Kemal Kilicdaroglu of the Republican People's Party, told his party's parliamentary group.

"We know what will happen after an earthquake, but why do not we take any measure before an earthquake?" Kilicdaroglu asked.

Turkey's earthquake laws are complicated and force its bureaucracy to fight with earthquake risks, he noted.

"We should think about this: How can we minimize the death toll after an earthquake or how do we have no death toll? We should also think about how do not we have any loss of property after an earthquake?" he said.

Kilicdaroglu’s comments come in the wake of last week's magnitude-6.6 quake in Izmir, Turkey's third-largest city, which killed at least 109 people, injured more than 1,000 and left scores homeless.

In 1999, a magnitude-7.4 tremor hit the industrial province of Kocaeli, leaving nearly 18,000 dead and 45,000 injured.

Nearly 16 million people were affected, and 200,000 left homeless.